The good news is there are lots of jobs opening up for people who want to work in the electric power sector. The work is well-paid, often exciting, and has promising opportunities for advancement. The bad news is that there aren’t enough new people entering the field to replace everyone who will be retiring in the next ten years. It’s become a natural challenge for educational institutions from across North America to leap into the field, offering new and better programs for people entering the power sector. The institutions dedicated to education and training in power technology certainly have their work cut out for them: employees and employers alike are no doubt trying to assess whether the programs will be able to adapt rapidly enough to embrace the new realities, or gear up quickly enough to process the sheer numbers of graduates that will be required.
There are many drivers for the growth: utilities are replacing aging assets, policies are being handed down requiring the integration of higher levels of renewable energy, and new technologies, including many related to smart grid functions, are being added from several directions. “Arguably, the speed at which the grid gets updated and renewed depends on how well and how quickly we train young people to do all the work,” says APPrO Executive Director Jake Brooks.
At a time when rebuilding and upgrading the province’s aging power infrastructure is becoming increasingly urgent, the baby boomers who form the bulwark of the expertise in the sector are starting to retire. To put some figures on that, the latest findings from the non-profit agency Electricity Human Resources Canada (EHRC) in Ottawa are that the power industry is going to have to fill some 45,000 jobs between 2011 and 2016 – 23,000 of them in occupations considered critical, like powerline technician. The scale is enormous: some $295 billion worth of infrastructure rebuilds and upgrades are expected between now and 2030.
Another organization with a different focus recently put a different light on the case from a different angle. Carbon Management Canada (CMC), a national network “working with industry to develop commercially feasible ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” recently estimated that as many as 27,000 additional university, college or technical institute graduates could be needed by 2030 to allow Canada to achieve its stated long-term GHG reduction target of 60-70% from 2006 levels by 2050.
“We’ll need engineers, geologists, geoscientists, technicians and technologists,” says Richard Adamson, CMC managing director. “That would be a big challenge under the best of circumstances, but the bigger challenge is that many of the skill sets required to achieve that are the same skill sets that the energy industry is already short of under its present business as usual projections.”
The report focused on labor requirements associated with investments in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which have been identified as a critical part of Canada’s GHG abatement strategy, and to a lesser extent on cogeneration in the oil sands.
It shouldn’t be that hard to fill the gap. The components are mostly in place. For one thing, industry – the union, the employers and the educational institutions – have all been doing their outreach. John Sprackett at the Power Workers’ Union says TradeUp for Success, a program developed between the PWU, EHRC and the major utilities like Hydro One, has spoken to over a hundred thousand elementary and high school students over the past several years. Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning’s School of Applied Technology, for one, has an innovative “town hall” program, featuring guest speakers from industry.
Second, there is evidence of widespread willingness to get into power-related lines of work. When industry advertises for Power Line Technicians (formerly linemen), the applicants number in the thousands, Sprackett says.
To a degree, the government’s focus for the past several years on the environmental benefits of new power technology, increasing conservation, demand management and on adding renewable energy can be credited with having made young people aware of and interested in those fields, in at least a general way, and primed them to see such a career as socially worthwhile. A range of experts seem to believe that students are now much more environmentally aware of and interested in potential of more sustainable technologies.
At the same time, government and universities are embracing new models of experiential learning – where students get out of the classroom and enjoy opportunities to learn in real world settings. The Ontario government’s 2013 budget backed a new program titled “Ontario Youth Innovation Fund,” which includes new funds for the Ontario Centres of Excellence program stressing experiential learning. The government also committed to provide $20 million over two years for the On Campus Accelerator Centres intended to facilitate development of entrepreneurial activity in Ontario’s universities and colleges.
Education changes to reflect evolution in the power sector
What does the need look like?
David Curtis, Hydro One’s Director of Asset Management, describes what the various levels of the workforce do there, in an example of a new wind or solar farm that’s received an OPA contract somewhere along one of Hydro One’s distribution lines.
As Curtis points out, roughly half the new wind and solar capacity being planned is to be located on its transmission lines, and the other half on its distribution lines. Let’s say developer X wants to put a renewable energy project somewhere out on a distribution line, that may or may not need several kilometers of extra line to connect it, but will definitely need extra equipment at the local distribution station.
• First, Hydro One’s planning department has to analyze the requirements of the line being affected, particularly for protection and control systems.
• That analysis is then handed over to its engineering group for detailed design – the line itself, and the breaker connection at the station.
• When it comes to building the facility, and whatever additions are necessary to the grid – possibly some kilometers of new line – Hydro One must decide how much of the construction they’re doing themselves, versus the private contractor. Hydro One will do the work on anything that’s attached to its own system, but it has to approve all of it. This is the work of its technical staff.
• And finally Hydro One’s field staff on the ground are in charge of the final settings for protection and control, making sure everything is properly installed, as well as performing ongoing maintenance.
New people are needed for all of those levels of activity, Curtis says. Personnel for the first two are recruited from university graduates, and the second two from college diploma holders. Interns will be involved at all four levels.
“It’s a good way to evaluate people as potential full hires once they graduate, and also to gauge how well they’re being educated,” says Curtis. He estimates that, on average, half the students who pass through their hands in coop or internship placements get hired once they graduate, though this can vary widely from year to year. And Hydro One does plan for retiree replacement two and three years ahead, but it’s tricky, Curtis explains. Veterans in the workforce may stay longer than expected, or leave earlier, and the company has to stay within a narrow range of over- and under-staffing.
What do entrants into the workforce look for?
One question that new entrants into the workforce may find themselves dealing with is which is better for them personally – a university education with a degree at the end, or a college diploma? Many prefer working with their hands and choice is simple. Pay is good, placement rates are good, prospects for career advancement are good. In fact, more than one college finds that enrolment by mature students, including those with bachelor’s and even master’s degrees, outnumbers enrolment by high school graduates. “I would bet on a college person with a 3-year diploma getting a job before a 4-year bachelor’s,” says Chris Beaver of Sheridan College.
From the perspective of mentally challenging work as well, Beaver argues that there is no longer such a clear distinction between the career path through a university degree and one through a technical diploma. Digital micro-technology has put high-end technical information in the hands of every line worker. A CAD/CAM designer would be a pretty sophisticated trade, he suggests. Someone going around maintaining energy efficiency systems still wants to be able to be able to take advantage of provincial energy efficiency programs. “If you’re an electrician working for Pratt & Whitney, there’s a lot more on your shoulders than just keeping the lights on. You want to do it in an energy-efficient manner, you have to understand the concepts behind it and report on it,” he says.
John Sprackett in fact says the job has always called on a more sophisticated skill set than might appear from the outside. Employees have always been faced with keeping up with technological change but the rate of change is more rapid today. The evolution of supply sources, equipment and controls, demand management techniques, environmental regulations and the restructuring of companies in the sector all play a role. A tradesperson still needs skills in a variety of fields.
The academic side
As the legacy power system incorporates new technologies – the various components of the smart grid, the incorporation of renewable sources with their variability, the advent of more distributed generation from a myriad of small installations on the distribution system – the colleges and universities have been busy collaborating with industry, through curriculum advisory councils, on keeping the training programs up to current needs.
“We don’t want to be teaching from a 14-year old textbook,” notes Chris Beaver. “The fundamentals don’t change, but today we’re dealing with pneumatic control technologies, digital control technologies, and so on, in the power industry we’re dealing with the integration of the internet for control and communications.”
Hydro One, for example, formed a curriculum council with four community colleges (Algonquin College in Ottawa, Georgian College in Barrie, Mohawk College in Hamilton and Northern College in Timmins), together with subject matter experts from its own ranks, all of whom spent some three years analyzing what was needed, and collectively developed courses like power system engineering. Coop placements, scholarships & bursaries were also developed.
Hydro One has also reached out to universities – in fact the work with universities began even earlier than the colleges, but it involved a lengthier dialogue. Hydro One, and before it Ontario Hydro, doesn’t have its own research facilities, explains David Curtis, who was involved in curriculum development at both college and university level. Hydro One has always contracted research and development out to the universities. And in order to have research into the areas the utility needs, the universities need to have professors with a suitable background and an interest in conducting and publishing such research.
“University professors live and die by what they publish,” Curtis notes. “Once the universities were confident they were engaged in a long-term relationship with us, they were prepared to work with us to develop the relevant courses in power engineering, to recruit people in those fields, to provide areas of research that will be good for their career development and also provide job opportunities for their students.” The result is hands-on original work on real-world problems for the students under professorial direction, published papers for the professors, and solutions for Hydro One.
Curtis highlights the example of IEEE standards on protection and control for distributed generation. These standards still need considerable research to adapt to individual conditions, with new sensing equipment and communications technology. Each individual station may require a different way of applying the standard. The person studying the problem at the university will first run a computer model, then test it on a small scale physical model.
Nor are universities alone in engaging students in real-world research. At Sheridan, Chris Beaver says, in second and third year all 35,000 students in the various fields move on to research and customized engineering to solve actual real-world challenges from industrial partners.
Sheridan will be taking the process further, becoming a university by 2016, with a focus on applied research.
The role of hands-on
The point has been raised already, but expectations on job entrants seem to have changed. Time was, a bachelor’s degree in engineering would get you a job. Then you spent some time getting familiar with the needs, tasks and tools of your particular job, and you started being productive. Maybe not so much any more. Employers seem to expect new hires to be able to hit the ground running. Educators and industry both are easing that process by blurring the line between learning and work.
HB White Canada, an EPC contractor in the energy field with over 5000 MW worth of wind projects in North America, takes about five of UOIT’s engineering students a year as interns. Greg Duke, Director of Business Development at HB White, describes what they do.
“The interns go work as project engineers, under the construction manager. They may actually be the project engineer, or work alongside the project engineer. We get them typically in the third year of a five-year university engineering degree. They get full exposure to the project – a wind farm or a solar farm – from cradle to grave, and anything can be asked of them: financial reconciliation from budget to actuals, they may deal with municipalities or unions, do scheduling – they’re involved in everything. Minimum is one year, up to eighteen months. The project usually lasts about a year. We get them in January usually, and we’ll have them in the office for four to six weeks, then they’re off to the site, till the project ends. That will usually be in October – November, then they close out to the end of the year, then they’re back to school.
We hire about 90% of the people who come in as interns, and we’ve been very happy with the results.”
As Professor Peter DeVita, author of ‘A Search for Advocacy – Creating the Canadian Engineering Profession’ points out, students begin with textbooks and coursework, acquiring the basic science and the analytical skills they will use. But, “[e]ngineers create things that never existed before,” he says. “That means creative work. It means looking at real situations and coming up with new answers.” Whatever the practice may have been in the past, now it means hands-on experience solving real-world needs. Increasingly, that is occurring at all levels of the training process, in colleges, in universities and in student placements. People looking for their first degree or diploma are participating in making the system work.
In a sense, the line between those studying in an institution and staff in a workplace is blurring. Professor John Froats describes programs at the University of Ontario’s Institute of Technology (UOIT), Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science (FESNS):
“We have a Bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering, currently the only one in Canada, teaching the science fundamentals along with the specifics of nuclear energy production. We also have a master’s program in nuclear engineering, and a PhD. The industry also came to us last year, asking for some specialty post-graduate courses in nuclear design, so we’ve added a four-course graduate diploma for people with a basic engineering degree. We have a bridge program, where we take three-year college graduates, and add two years of university courses, for a bachelor’s degree in nuclear science. And we have a five-month advanced operational overview for managers, that brings a working plant manager through all the aspects of how a plant operates – electrical systems, chemistry, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics. Then they’re ready to go on to shift manager, a process that normally takes three years in-plant.”
That last program Prof. Froats describes would seem to be part of a kind of revolving door emerging between the workplace and the universities and colleges. He agrees with the picture, at least in Ontario. “Plant manager skills in past would have been learned partly on the job. But programs have become more intensive and longer. This allows people with ten or fifteen years of experience to come back to pick up managerial skills, and get set up for the next level.
Tom MacLean at the Canadian Union of Skilled Workers CUSW describes a similar process in the nuclear sector, where new hires can be taken on at OPG or the Bruce facility with varying levels of background, down to high school leaving, begin their five-year training as apprentices, and starting around the second year, start taking three ten-week courses in one of the colleges for basic electrical worker skills. The sector also offers more specialized training, for people with years of experience, even from other sectors, but always with a view to upgrading their skills – programs like Certified Nuclear Worker and High Voltage Maintainer (these are people who look after high voltage transformers from installation, through maintenance to decommissioning, where previously that would have been three separate job categories – another instance of how training and job requirements pace each other in constant flux). These programs are offered, some through the colleges again, and some by trainers brought to the workplace. Development and hiring of skilled workers in Ontario’s nuclear industry is a kind of activity shared between Bruce Power, OPG, CUSW, Hydro One, and nuclear supplier Areva.
“We believe we have the best nuclear workers in the world, with world-class skill sets,” says MacLean. “Our [Ontario’s] STEs (standardized training elements) are in place, certified by the worldwide umbrella organizations, and with those you can work anywhere in the world.”
And it works the other way, starting with the undergraduate interns. As noted above, Hydro One relies on universities for its research. The same works in FESNS, where, after the usual third year internship of six to eight months, in their fourth year students get to work on a piece of original research, under faculty direction. About half of those projects at present are provided by the industry itself – OPG, Candu Energy, AECL, CNSC, or Bruce Power.
“For this fall semester, between our nuclear program and our other program in energy systems, we’re running 21 undergrad projects,” says Prof. Froats. In the first semester they work in groups of 3 to 5, and in the second they individually complete some aspect of it. At the end of the semester they get to present their results to the faculty’s industry partners. The process continues at graduate level, on the Master’s and the PhD level, at increasingly original and fundamental levels, but always related to something the industry can use. See the next page for a list of current research programs at the graduate level, in Ryerson’s Centre for Urban Energy.
Areas of research can include materials development, support for existing operations, design of next generation technology, advance basic science in the areas of radiology, dosage, and environmental effects of radiation. UOIT has a radiation science faculty as well, that studies things like the effects of low-level radiation, e.g., or ways to allow materials last longer so plant lifetimes can be extended. Analog control systems are being converted to digital, an area where problems need solutions. There may be work needed on an international regulatory framework for the nuclear industry, in the wake of Fukushima.
“Sometimes you get quite innovative results,” says Froats. “It’s amazing what the kids can do.” The collaboration provides great economic leverage to keep university programs vital, introduce students to employers, and generate results for industry.
The structure of the educational process may also be changing.
Research for this article turned up stories of people with bachelor’s, and even master’s degrees, going back to college to get a useable skill, so that convocation at a college often has more mature students, many with bachelors’ degrees, than students out of high school. But Peter DeVita says someone with a degree doesn’t go to a college to compete for a tech job. They’re often going to a college to do their engineering job better, because while they learned all the analytical skills they need in university, their courses never gave them the hands-on experience with an actual problem in the field. In fact, he says, the United States is considering requiring a master’s degree as the entry level for a professional engineer, starting in 2015.
Algonquin College, at any rate, seems to have anticipated the practice. For its Women in Engineering program it takes university graduates with a science degree already to their name, and puts them through another two years of electrical technology. For this purpose the college compressed a standard three-year program into two years, given that the students already have the basic science. The extra years, past the undergraduate level, allow the student to get more into design.
DeVita even suggests that engineers should have something equivalent to a medical internship, a specialized training-on-the-job approach that gives them hands-on experience. Exposure to innovative thinking and creating new installations would follow. Innovation centres can serve the process, and he suggests that government could fund new grads working in such innovation centres.
EHRC has taken the curriculum council idea and the TradeUp program further, with ten national occupational standards (NOS) developed so far, and more on the way. Developed and validated by the industry, the NOS detail the skills, competencies and knowledge requirements for selected jobs, and are available for employers posting job descriptions, for training by employers and educators, for developing or updating curricula, and for informing prospective students.
EHRC in fact will be holding its own conference in Toronto in November, shortly before APPrO’s 25th anniversary power conference, and will also be participating in one of APPrO’s conference sessions.
Employers and educational institutions seem to be looking for more than technical skill as well. “Industry wants people with particular technical skills, but also wants people who can think for themselves, who can meet outcomes, solve problems on their own – not just execute tasks they’ve been given,” says Kerry Johnston at Humber College’s Sustainable Energy and Building Technology Program. Schools are adding project management and other managerial skills to their curriculum (see “An intern’s experience,” previous page).
Programs are also reaching out to different cohorts in the potential workforce. With Hydro One’s help, Algonquin College, for example, has a Women in Engineering program, currently still at the pilot stage, with 22 students who just started in August, in several universities.
“The number of women going into engineering has declined in the last few years,” observes Sheelagh Lawrance, Manager of the community investment program at Hydro One. “We’re working with the University of Waterloo, Western, Ryerson and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. We launched a Women in Engineering program with them, on a similar model to our college consortium, on March 8, International Women’s Day. We’re focusing on three areas: outreach into elementary and high schools to encourage girls into engineering as a career, encouraging them not to drop math and science; we’re providing mentoring support from our own women staff to undergraduate women so that they continue on that career path; and we’re providing early career post-graduate support as well.”
Electricity Human Resources in Ottawa has a similar “bridging the gap” program to encourage interested women into engineering.
Programs are needed and being developed as well for First Nations students, and for foreign-trained workers.
The high visibility of public policy related to conservation and sustainable energy plays a role in creating an ongoing awareness of and interest in conservation and in renewable technologies. Fortunately, the Ontario government has announced policies that will assist the power, and other sectors, in other areas as well. The Ontario Ministry of Finance has announced a Youth Jobs Strategy, providing an investment of $295 million over two years. The strategy would support several initiatives to promote employment opportunities, entrepreneurship and innovation for youth in Ontario.
Of particular interest to many in the power sector, the Business-Labour Connectivity and Training Fund would provide $25 million over two years to support youth-focused training programs that strengthen innovation and collaboration skills, as well as initiatives from business groups. Another component, while addressed to the post-doctoral level, is the Ontario Youth Innovation Fund, with $10 million over two years to provide exceptional post-doctoral fellows with skills and experience to lead and manage industrial research, development and commercialization efforts. The investment would flow through Ontario Centres of Excellence, which offer established infrastructure, and should leverage $40 million from industry. The new investment would build on the success of Mitacs, which has created 1,650 internships for graduate students and 111 post-doctoral fellowships in Ontario, since 2008.
The government would also provide $20 million over two years for the On Campus Accelerator Centres that would facilitate development of entrepreneurial activity in Ontario’s universities and colleges.
Other components in the announced policy are:
• Ontario Youth Employment Fund ($195 million over two years to create employment opportunities for 25,000 youth in Ontario).
• Ontario Youth Entrepreneurship Fund ($45 million over two years, with an expected nearly 6,000 mentorship and job opportunities created). It would focus on three priority areas:
• Mentorship: connecting young entrepreneurs with experienced entrepreneur mentors;
• Seed-stage capital, partnering investors with young entrepreneurs;
• High school entrepreneurship outreach, funding over two years to entrepreneurship-focused organizations that would support outreach and provide tools to students through classroom presentations, conferences and experiential learning.
One aspect of policy remains, however, that bears upon the workforce and that remains cloudy, says the Power Worker Union’s John Sprackett: A clear and durable commitment to an integrated province-wide plan for the power sector. Will there be more renewables, will there be new nuclear? The wires companies can expect to go on delivering electricity and modernize accordingly, he says, but until there is a sound and sustainable long-term energy plan, generating companies will not be clear on their futures. For example – will the province announce new nuclear units at Darlington to replace Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering plant, scheduled to close in 2020? Where will the 3,000 or so high-skilled workers, currently at Pickering, fit into the future?
“We need stable electricity policy. Then companies can plan their workforces, make decisions, hire new trainees and take on the expenses that come with that,” he said in an interview.
Sidebar:
A program sampler
Some programs from Humber College and Trade Up for Success, a joint program between Hydro One, OPG, Bruce Power and the Power Workers’ Union):
• Computer and Network Support Technician
• Computer Engineering Technology
• Electrical Engineering Technician/Technology Control Systems
• Electromechanical Engineering Technician/Technology (Automation and Robotics Profile)
• Electronics Engineering Technician/Technology
• Mechanical Engineering Technician/Technology
• Project Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Sustainable Energy and Building Technology
• Wireless Telecommunications
• Construction and Maintenance Electrician
• Control Technician
• Electrical Forester / Utility Arborist
• Mechanical Maintainer
• Nuclear Operator
• Power Line Technician
• Truck and Coach Technician
• Certificate in Energy Management and Innovation
Sidebar:
An intern’s experience
Glen Courtis, a 23-year-old intern currently in a 12-month internship at Ontario Power Generation while finishing his courses at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, may forgive us for describing him as a poster boy for the new cadre.
In his posting at OPG’s nuclear division, he is working as a cost and scheduling analyst, the project management side of engineering, as he describes it. It involves creating schedules, tracking progress on those schedules, cost analysis, working with EPC contractors on troubleshooting their own schedules; before, during and even after the project is completed. The projects themselves typically involve the maintenance, replacement and/or updating of aging components.
The program is well-rounded, he says, with a year of business management after the fourth year of engineering – project management, human resource management, and accounting.
It’s a paid internship, though naturally not at a regular engineer’s salary.
He also completed a 1-year internship at construction company HB White, working as a project engineer on a windfarm, making sure designs were being properly implemented. The job called on some specialized skills just to do with windfarms.
“I took a course in electric power systems, in how the grid operates,” he said in describing his experience. “Everything from the turbine pad to integrating at the transformer station.”
Glen was one of nearly 50 interns OPG nuclear hired last may. HB White has 4-5 interns at any given time.
Sidebar:
Energy research projects at Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Energy
The following is a sample of the kind of interaction between educational institutions and the workplace, taken from Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Energy. Like a number of institutions discussed in this feature, the Centre works with several partners – in this case Hydro One, Toronto Hydro, Schneider Electric, Enbridge, Electrovaya and the Ontario Power Authority – who provide the CUE with issues they need researched and the funding towards the training and support of the students who engage in the research, under the direction of CUE faculty. The students undertaking the work range from Master’s to PhD and post-doctoral fellows.
Ryerson University’s Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science (FEAS) has also launched an awards program for potential student entrepreneurs. The Norman Esch Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship Awards provide financial assistance to current undergraduate and graduate students and recent FEAS graduates.
“The purpose of the awards is to enable new, innovative ideas for products, inventions and technologies that are relevant to the Canadian economy now and in the future,”, explains Matthew Kerry, Marketing and Communications Manager at CUE.
The following list of current research is taken from the CUE’s website.
Renewable Energy
• Micro Hydroelectric Generators-Electrical/Generator Optimization
• Intelligent Algorithms for Integrating Wind Power to the Distribution System
• Electrical Impact on Transformer Station Components Due to Solar Panels
• Control & Interfaces for Urban Clean Energy Microgrid
Power Generation & Transmission Systems
• Transmission Supply Diversification Challenges- Central & Downtown Toronto
Efficiency, Conservation & Demand Management
• Micro Tri-Generation of Electricity, Building Heating and Cooling from Natural gas
• Reducing the Hydro One Carbon Footprint
• Hydro and Pumped Storage (completed)
Electric Vehicles & Infrastructure
• Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Charging Stations for Urban Energy Systems
• Electrical Impact on Transformer Station Components Due to Electric Vehicles
Energy Storage
• System Integration of Large Scale Energy Storage Systems Using Lithium Batteries
• Electrical Impact on Transformer Stations Due to Storage Technologies
• Storage Components of Future Grids, Energy Arbitrage & Power Quality: Flywheel Project
Smart Building & Net-Zero Homes
• Residence Power Development of Residential HVAC & Air Conditioning Demand Management & Control Systems
Policy & Regulatory Issues
• Energy Conservation/Efficiency Policy and Education
Smart Grid
• Secure & Reliable Data Communications for Smart Grids
Environmental, Social & Economic Impacts
• Project coming soon